This will probably be my last digest until the new year. I’ll be posting over Christmas break, but on a lighter schedule. Merry Christmas everyone!
What Not to Do
Shortly after Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered by their disturbed son in a domestic tragedy, President Trump posted this:
This is undignified to say the least. Never do something like this. This kind of boorish behavior is deeply alienating to normal people, and also a factor in why educated people have been shifting leftward. They are rightly repulsed by such low class behavior.
People might say you should never “punch right,” but there’s nothing right wing about this kind of behavior. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard of behavior than this.
Contours of Antisemitism
The Manhattan Institute did an interesting survey of Republican views, looking at what they call “Current Republicans,” “Core Republicans” and “New Entrant Republicans.” There were some interesting findings on antisemitism in the Republican world:
Anti-Jewish Republicans are typically younger, disproportionately male, more likely to be college-educated, and significantly more likely to be New Entrant Republicans. They are also more racially diverse. Consistent church attendance is one of the strongest predictors of rejecting these attitudes; infrequent church attendance is, all else equal, one of the strongest predictors of falling into this segment.
I’m reminded of Ross Douthat’s quip that if you don’t like the religious right, wait until you meet the post-religious right.
There was also wide variation by race in revisionist views of the Holocaust:
Holocaust denial or minimization: Nearly four in ten in the Current GOP (37%) believe the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe. Younger men are especially likely to hold this view (54% of men under 50 vs. 39% of women under 50). Among men over 50, 41% agree, compared with 18% of women over 50. Racial divides are particularly striking:
77% of Hispanic GOP voters
30% of white GOP voters
66% of black GOP voters
There are also some crazy-high percentages of beliefs in conspiracy theories:
“One in three in the Current GOP (33%) believe that childhood vaccines cause autism.”
“Four in ten in the Current GOP (41%) believe that the 9/11 attacks were likely orchestrated or permitted by U.S. government actors.”
“A similarly sized chunk of the Current GOP (36%) believes that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked by NASA.”
Obviously there are huge problems on the left as well, including a much larger and more institutionally accepted antisemitism, so let’s be sure to not give them a pass.
Whither the Boomer?
The American Reformer symposium on Boomers had a couple of interesting pieces, including one from R. R. Reno on Boomers and their consequences. He writes:
These sorry phenomena were midwifed and encouraged under the leadership of Baby Boomers. This generation—my generation—has rightly earned the disdain of younger Americans. We hired the DEI commissars. It was under our leadership that higher education became a progressive madras. We were in charge when NAFTA was passed, and China was brought into the WTO. We ran the NGOs that funded Black Lives Matter. My generation launched failed wars in the Middle East. We were the top-level Goldman Sachs partners who profited handsomely from the China trade. We designed the 2008 bailouts. We wrote the screenplays that celebrated perversion. It was Baby Boomer elites who quietly conspired to suspend enforcement of immigration laws. In sum, we are the architects of today’s unhappy world.
Younger readers are likely to have a keen sense of the consequences of this mismanagement of our nation’s affairs. But they may not grasp the extraordinary degree to which power was concentrated in the hands of Baby Boomers, especially peak Boomers, the members of my generation who came into adulthood in the 1960s.
C. R. Wiley also offered some observations:
Boomers are not empty cisterns; if I’ve given that impression, I apologize. There are two things they have—one is tangible, but the other is something less concrete, but more valuable.
The first thing is the institutions Boomers have built. In some cases, they received them from their elders and then refashioned them as they pursued their own goals. But more often they founded new institutions and built them (in many instances) to impressive size. It took work and sacrifice and creativity—often on a grand scale—to accomplish these things. The institutions they’ve built are valuable, and we shouldn’t devalue them.
But even more valuable is the hard-won wisdom that comes from building those things. Much of that wisdom can carry over to what is called for today. The day-in and day-out savvy and dogged dedication that built those institutions is what the rising generation needs.
To repeat, both Reno and Wiley are Boomers themselves.
The American Mind also had an interesting recent piece on “Total Boomer Luxury Communism.” (It’s a play on the title of a leftist book called Fully Automated Luxury Communism).
Wang’s comparison understates how much more the American government redistributes wealth compared to China. America is three times as wealthy, per person, as China. So the U.S. spends at least six times as much per person on social programs as China—and most of that goes to seniors.
There’s six times as much wealth redistribution happening in America as in China. That’s the “communism,” but only for the “Boomers.” The “luxury” part comes in how the government distributes these benefits.
Perversely, retired millionaires have become the greatest recipients of government aid. Max Social Security benefits in the U.S. are 3-4 times what seniors can ever hope to achieve in other developed nations, such as Britain, Canada, and New Zealand. These are allocated by lifetime income, so the greatest Social Security benefits go to wealthy individuals, who need them the least
…
Today, most Americans have no idea how their tax dollars are spent. For example, 91% do not know that Social Security benefits can reach over $60,000 per person. They have no idea that a senior household can collect nearly $117,000 a year just from Social Security. And if you tell people that Medicare programs cover golf balls, greens fees, social clubs, ski trips, and horseback riding, they stare in disbelief.
Click over to read the whole thing.
On the flip side of the issue, Scott Alexander has a new piece called “Against Against Boomers.”
Zooming out, it seems sort of like Boomers have delivered the greatest period of peace and prosperity in history: global, American, take your pick. The window of Boomer dominance, c. 1980 - 2010, saw the fall of Communism, steadily rising incomes, steadily growing life expectancy, and no foreign wars bigger than Iraq (total American death toll: 4,500).
The Boomers could reasonably blame their Greatest Generation fathers for sending them to die in Vietnam. Those Greatest Generation fathers could reasonably blame their fathers for plunging the country into a Great Depression. In comparison, we’re mad about - what, exactly? Higher housing prices? Hardly seems World-War-level bad.
Best of the Web
NYT: How to Find a Date in a Country With Over 30 Million Extra Men (gift link)
Due to the one child policy and a preference among Chinese families for boys, there are 30 million more men than woman in China. This short film profiles some of the younger, lower status, “incel” men there who are unable to get a date.
The focus is on men working with a dating coach. His tips - e.g., “compliance tests” - are taken almost directly from the Western manosphere/pickup artist community. He has his students doing what’s called “cold approach” on the street, with no success. The dating coach apparently advised them to do this with what’s called a “direct” approach (“Can I add you on WeChat?”), which is bad advice for those situations. No wonder it doesn’t work - and probably creeps the women out to boot.
My advice in these situations would be to first practice striking up friendly conversations without any romantic intent. Banter with the cashier. Talk with the older man sitting on a bench. Etc. Learn out to engage socially with people of all types.
NYT: Fighting for Femininity, Not Feminism (gift link) - A group of young conservatives feel that the pressures they face as 20-something women have been made worse by the liberal feminism that defined their youth
Samuel Abrams and Joel Kotkin: Equal but Separate: How the Gender Divide Is Rewiring America
WSJ: The Chinese Billionaires Having Dozens of U.S.-Born Babies Via Surrogate - Videogame executive Xu Bo, said to have more than 100 children, and other elites build mega-families, testing citizenship laws and drawing on nannies, IVF and legal firms set up to help them
NYT: They Answered an Ad for Surrogates, and Found Themselves in a Nightmare (gift link) - Eve was one of dozens of Thai women who traveled 4,000 miles — only to be trapped by the dark side of the global fertility industry. - Surrogacy is the real Handmaid’s Tale.
Megan McArdle: The Brother I Lost - What a deathbed confession and a long-disappeared sibling taught me about a woman’s right to choose.
New Content and Media Mentions
New this week:
The Problem with the Evangelical Elite - There is no evangelical elite. Why that matters and what to do about it.
Comments on the Evangelical Elite Problem - The Best of Your Thoughts
Confronting the Unspeakable Truth - Jacob Savage’s viral essay exposes how DEI has quietly shut doors on a generation of young white men—while too many refuse to say it out loud
My podcast this week was with Bobby Fijan on why families are fleeing cities. He’s a real estate developer trying to do something about it.